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Unless you’ve been unconscious in a ditch this evening, you’ve heard that Special Counsel Robert Mueller has handed forth an indictment charging thirteen Russians and three Russian companies with meddling in our election! If you haven’t had a chance to peruse the 37-page document it really is a must see. We couldn’t help but wonder if our most prolific local Trumpster, Billy Shreve, you know the guy who wants to “Trump Annapolis” as a state senator, “unwittlingly” put forth any of this propaganda as listed in these two parts of the indictment:

and…

You bet your #MAGA hat he did!

First let’s start with this:

Whoopsie Daisy!

Is “Unwitting” Billy’s middle name?

Because look at this parade of nonsense:

We think we should get some kind of journalistic award for digging all this out! But, we will settle for you voting this creep out of office!

Our meeting starts off with a nice recognition of the Linganore High School football team. Billy votes against the whole agenda, so can’t he just leave now? We have four nice public commenters. Many are present to talk about the amendments to the Forest Ordinance Bill. Melanie Cox, of the League of Women Voters, also commends the council for putting the hearing concerning DRRAs back on the agenda. The league has researched this issue, and believes this bill is a good way to balance growth in our community.

Next up is a rather lengthly discussion from Carson Bise on impact fees. You can read the whole report if you like. Basically, elementary and high schools will be severely overcrowded by 2026-27 if we aren’t careful.

Most of the council members have thoughtful comments and questions, but not Kirby! He seems to want to argue over the cost of the study, then doesn’t. Then he tells us that WE should have planned better for all this growth!

Is he actually admitting fault, or trying to pretend he hasn’t been on the board/council since 2010? He was a significant part of the “we” who should have done this hypothetical planning. Anyhoo, Kirby doesn’t think it’s much of a crisis yet. And, we have all these homes in the pipeline and all these homes were in the pipeline in the past, so all’s good?

Billy wants to know if FCPS is going to redistrict the whole county any time soon, you know because that’s such an easy, uncomplicated process! So, Urbana folks don’t be surprised when Billy starts advocating that your kids be shipped up to Thurmont!

John Mathias, our esteemed county attorney, is here to make a presentation on the legal side of DRRAs. He explains their history, court cases, and implications for our county. He tells of a certain court case which ruled that you couldn’t change the type of development once vesting had occurred. Mostly because it isn’t fair to the people who already invested in said development. It seems as though Mr. Mathias was sent there to explain to some people how to do their job. More power to him! Tony has much to say, but we are to the point where his voice is just a buzzing noise, so you’ll have to figure all that out on your own.

Lastly, before the council breaks, Jessica and Tony introduce some amendments to the County Executive’s Forest Ordinance Bill. With input from the community they came up with some compromises. The amendments pass, with Billy and Kirby voting no. It will now go back to a public hearing.

Bud then moves to have his forest bill removed from consideration. He tells us that he wishes there was more discussion before hand, before he felt the need to write his own bill. He states that compromise is good for the community and the country. And, we would really like to know, Bud, when things all broke down. We are still perplexed and angry over all that’s gone down lately. Bill is removed with Billy abstaining and Kirby voting no.

The council then goes into closed session, we hear that more shenanigans went down with the DRAA hearing. Stay tuned!

We haven’t had much time to recover from last week’s meeting, but hey who said keeping up with this county council was for the faint of heart? We’ll see if the spirit of St. Valentine fills the hearts of our favorite local characters, or if we are going to have a situation more along these lines:

Oh dear!

Grab your agendaand follow along, but do remember to take care. Billy isn’t coming to help any of our fans!

Lots of presenters to start off the evening! Impact Fee Report, Report on Developer Rights and Responsibilities (DRRA), and Interagency Internal Audits! Let’s toast to all of our hard working county employees who take a lot of abuse at the hands of some of our council. Mix up a big Love in a Glass in their honor!

It’s Forest Resource Ordinance time! Will the bills be reconciled or will there still be two? Mix up a pitcher of Love/Hate as the answer to that one is revealed to us!

Time to go behind closed doors to discuss a county executive appointment! Then we are back at 7:00 for more happy fun time! Grab some water to rehydrate!

We thought this was tabled, but things have a way of creeping back on to the agenda lately. We suppose the public pressure really paid off, for we return with a hearing on the DRRA bill. Will this hearing result in more badgering of the public by Tony? Will the developer’s lawyers once again be given unlimited time to answer questions? Is anyone running anything around here anymore?! Anyhoo, mix up a barrel of Love Gone Sour, since a lot has changed, and not for the better, with this council lately!

The public has a chance to speak and then we have some council member comments. This is always a crap shoot, so go ahead and make a row of Love Hurts shots, and fire at will!

This is a busy month for the council, and by extension us! So we’ll let you know what happens and then we are right back here on February 20th for another edition of your favorite local reality show. Happy Valentine’s Day!

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If you watched yesterday’s county council meeting, you heard that our esteemed High Sheriff Jenkins was not available to present the mutual aid agreement with Washington County. When your Lady Yokels heard that he was meeting with the President well, we collectively looked like this:

Seriously folks, we love Frederick, but since when is our High Sheriff an expert on immigration or MS-13? There are bigger jurisdictions who surely have more expertise on this subject. Then again, maybe none of those folks toe the Trump line and wanted to be seen seated at the table with a man who says such terrible things about immigrants. Perhaps they don’t like the way that Trump paints all illegal immigrants as some kind of degenerate criminals. Our sheriff, on the other hand, holds no such qualms:

Great Zeus this is embarrassing. Here’s a news report on how Jenkins tried to shame other jurisdictions who didn’t take the ICE money. It’s amazing to us, with all the real problems we have here in Frederick County, Jenkins chooses to grandstand on the immigration stuff as though we are some kind of border state. He took a trip funded by the anti-immigrant group, FAIR, to get a first hand look at the border, made commercials for the same group, and supported the English Language Ordinance ,which was decidedly anti-immigrant. How this all connects to his responsibilities here in Frederick is beyond us. We have a real opioid issue in this county. People are dying, lives are being destroyed. That is what needs to be fixed right now. (And by fixed we don’t mean Billy Shreve’s film project, because as nice as that may seem, we are super skeptical that any at risk kids will participate.)

Thankfully, we have an election this year in which we can elect someone who will concentrate less on grandstanding on the national stage and will focus on what’s going on here in Frederick. If you haven’t heard of Karl Bickel click on this link and read all about him. This is the kind of law enforcement leadership we need.

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The public hearing on the MDX amendment to “the Zoning Ordinance to specify additional permitted uses in the Mixed Use Development District” is an instance when zzzzzzzzoning is unfortunately not boring. To briefly touch on this, the perception is that this amendment is hand crafted to target the Jefferson Tech Park area and that to adopt it would mean these people end up with distribution centers such as what we see out on Buckeystown Pike in their neighborhood, to the detriment of their property values. Since Steve McKay, who has frequently spoken on zoning issues in the Monrovia area, and Stand Up Frederick have already posted thoughts on this, please see those links for information while we focus on how much we were confused by what happened at the lectern last night. (P.S. you probably know that Steve McKay will be running against Tony Chmelik in the District 2 Republican Primary, and after Chmelik’s abominable behavior this evening we could not be more pleased that he is doing so.) If Mr. McKay and Lisa Jarosinski, who is running in the Democratic primary, are the candidates in the D2 general election, that will be one lucky D indeed. Those are two fine candidates.

First of all, it was a great joy to hear from The Public at this meeting. The Public is a lot more interesting than Our Regular Cast of Characters. Ray Barnes spoke on behalf of County Executive Gardner and gave three concerns. He was questioned at length by Billy, who kept trying to rile Mr. Barnes up with his circular dislogic. Mr. Barnes kept his cool throughout this display, and was ultimately dismissed by Bud who claimed he never heard these concerns before tonight and he wants to know hear from the public. The Lawyer for the Jefferson Tech Park–why did he get his three minutes, plus many, many more minutes of chit chat? Is this how it is supposed to work? We don’t get that. That does not seem reasonable to us. This guy tries to bog us down with legalese, claiming it’s in the interest of public safety that the council approve this bill. He also throws out the term “belts and suspenders legislation,” to which we can only think, “When has that fashion combo ever been a good idea?”

Steve McKay spoke knowledgeably, per usual, as did Kai Hagen.

Then Kai also got the many, many more minutes of chitchat “privilege.” We chuckle a bit that Kai is never succinct (and of course, we recognize that this is because he is thoughtful and diplomatic, so he makes an effort to be thorough and careful) but this really wasn’t about him at all. Because it was about Tony Chmelik being rabid, ranting, obnoxious, asking him questions in a rude and angry tone and then talking over him every time he tried to answer. We don’t typically give Tony Chmelik too much grief, because as compared to the Shrelauter bookends, he tends to stand out in the more normal grownup conduct spectrum. Well, not last night! And then we have no one stopping it. M.C. Keegan-Ayer tried to introduce a point of order in all this, and was completely ignored. we were under the impression that someone wields a gavel at these things and is supposed to maintain order? Who is that? It took far too long for any effort to be made to curtail this behavior. Kai may be an At-Large candidate for the Council, but currently he is The Public. The Public doesn’t deserve to be treated with such rudeness.

Tony sniped that Kai hasn’t taken responsibility for this issue. Well. We have thoughts. That thought is that as an elected representative in this county it is currently Tony Chmelik’s responsibility to shirk. If he wants to make this a special responsibility of Kai Hagen’s, we can all follow his dreams. We can do so by electing Kai Hagen to our County Council. So there’s a thing to think up on. It appears to be the one simple trick to respecting everyone involved here.

Here are some handy dandy campaign resources; we are in no way affiliated with any of the candidates and this message was approved by no one:

The yokels all missed the very beginning, only to tune in as Melanie Cox of the League of Women Voters was saying, “…give us a chance to speak.” The immediate assumption is that this is about the botched process for changing Frederick County’s representation to the Maryland Association of Counties (MACO). If we’re wrong about that, let us know and we will edit. We keep threatening to write a meeting up without watching it and see if we can guess what happens, because we know our characters purty stinkin well at this point. For example, Melanie Cox is a classy lady for whom dignity and propriety is important, so under the circumstances, it makes sense to leap to the conclusion that she would have liked to see a transparent process for the thing that…spoiler alert…comes to fruition later on.

Regular examples of totally predictable events: Budget adjustments. Everyone votes for those, except Billy the Abstinent. Then everyone votes to approve the minutes, except Billy the Obstinate. And you also already know that he couldn’t bother to speak into his microphone.

We have a presentation on a Mutual Aid Agreement with the Washington County Sheriff’s Department and the Hagerstown P.D. A member of the Sheriff’s department comes in our Sheriff’s stead, because… hold on to your little ACLU fold-up Constitutions…because Jenkins is out of pocket. Why? Because he is meeting with The President about immigration. Another of the Yokels had a boss who used meeting with the president as her euphemism for going to do her powder room business, which makes us snicker.

Mr. Yokel observes from the other couch, “The President of What???” We will not go into our skepticism of Jenkins’ qualifications on this subject, from the vantage point of living on the Mason-Dixon border. Riding Arpaio’s coattails onto Fox is all the qualifications the Dunning-Kruger Administration requires. Mr. Yokel still believes this tale is sound and fury signifying nothing, and since Newt Gingrich declared that facts are no longer a thing (and heck if he isn’t painfully right), we will all believe in whatever manner our emotional states’ require. The decision is in favor of a cooperative approach to providing for the common defence.

We move on to stripping M.C. Keegan-Ayer of her appointment to MACO so that Tony Chmelik can have it. M.C. is classy and abstains from voting on a matter that pertains to herself. Guess who doesn’t?! Both of them speak in favor of improving the process by which this is done. Great idea…

There’s a presentation about closing the intersection of Old Frederick Rd. at 15, for the sake of safety and traffic efficiency. Much more of this is needed in that general area–both in the safety and efficiency department.

We come to the First Calendar Readings, which is mainly the Throw Covfefe at the Wall and See What Sticks section, as far as Billy Shreve is concerned. Steve McKay said it best:

Council Member Billy Shreve is introducing a bunch of bills. I guess you can tell that it’s an election year. Billy Shreve – known to abstain on most votes – is all of the sudden introducing a handful of bills. Sorry folks, but after three years of his disagreeable nature, this doesn’t impress me a bit.

No one wants to speak, making us wonder if there are any redeeming qualities these bills may have if their authors cannot be bothered to enlighten us. Chemlik feels a bit of shame and takes up his own cause on the wood chipping bill. Isn’t local politics sexxxxxxy? Shreve is the definition of shameless.

Oh, Max is ready to play along. Can we get thinking cats for certain council members? They really need them.

It is sometimes difficult to tell by reading theagenda, but tonight’s meeting looks like it could be a real doozy. So take care of your liver. As always, this game is just for giggles. Actually participating in this to the fullest may result in death. You’ve been warned.

The meeting starts as always with public comments. We aren’t going to hold our breath on anyone actually showing up to speak. Just hold your beer, just in case.

A bunch of budget adjustments on first up on the agenda. Billy will complain about the library grant because everyone knows folks go to Borders instead, Kirby will kvetch about Citizens, blah, blah, blah. Mix yourself akitchen sink.

Next up on the agenda, approval of minutes for 4 meetings. When Billy abstains mix yourself up a flaming asshole.

Now, it’s time to discuss a mutual aid agreement between the Fred Co Sheriff, Wash Co Sheriff and Hagerstown City Police. Where are the Fred City Police? Make yourself a missing in action while you ponder that.

Well, well well, it’s time to take a vote on the Maryland Association of Counties Legislative Committee County Council Representation. What? Didn’t Bud already executive decision this? Things could get snippy. Make yourself a T-bone in anticipation of Bud’s phone ringing with its Bad to the Bone ringtone.

What workshop items are in store for us? We don’t know what these are as they aren’t listed on the agenda. This might be a good time to hydrate with some good old water.

Time to look at a petition to close a portion of Old Frederick Road to improve the safety of Route 15. Pick your favorite drink and stick it in a cone when anyone complains about being inconvenienced by this proposal.

Lots of First Readings on the docket! Including those that Billy decided he better get going on before anyone brought up the fact that he did nothing but ABSTAIN during his entire tenure as a council member. Anyhoo, sip on your Lazy Dazewhile you endure this portion of the evening.

It’s time to vote on the dueling Forest Ordinance bills. With Bud’s voting patterns recently altered, we predict his version will be the one to make it through; Sip on your Forest Funk while you think of all the lost trees.

Before the break, they will vote to pull the Adequate Public Facilities bill, and then Billy will vote against going into closed session. If it isn’t too close to 7:00, we may get treated to Billy complaining about having to waste all his precious time at Winchester Hall.

MDX hearing is the last bit of business this evening. There’s a lot of opposition to this bill because it would theoretically allow a warehouse to go next to a school or a housing development. Mainly, it’s introduction has to do with the fact that the Jefferson Technology Park did not fill up the way the previous BOCC claimed it would. While you listen to the arguments mix up a pitcher of Nuclear Disaster, and think of all the bad things the Young BOCC have brought upon this fine county.

Public and council member comments can get a little dicey, however, you’ve been through enough for one evening.